Arun Jaitley rejects Subramanian Swamy’s concerns, says CAG will audit GSTN

Clearing the air on audit of the firm providing IT backbone for GST, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said the Comptroller and Auditor General of India will audit the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN).

In a rebuff of party colleague Subramanian Swamy, he defended the equity structure of GSTN saying he did not find anything wrong in government holding 49 per cent stake in the company. Swamy has repeatedly questioned the shareholding pattern in the GSTN, terming it “a shady organisation” that was a “grave security” issue. “The present structure of GSTN was decided by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) when Mr P Chidambaram was the finance minister. I have personally reviewed the entire structure and I saw no reason to disagree with him,” Jaitley told CNBC TV18.

He reasoned that GSTN has to match various vouchers, literally in hundreds of crores every month and therefore it needs an extremely efficient IT network. “A government body – will it be able to do that, will a government body be able to hire the best experts at the market value salaries,” he asked. And therefore the structure which was conceived was that the central and the state governments will together own 49 …read more